Exploitation, Emigration and Anarchism: the Case of Isidoro Alessandro Bertazzon

Gianfranco Cresciani, Historical Consultant, New South Wales

Abstract

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, anarchism spread among tex-tile workers in the Veneto region. Many of them emigrated to Amer-ica because of exploitation and political persecution. One of them was Isidoro Bertazzon. In 1907 he went to Canada, via Ellis Island, and then to Seattle, in the United States. In 1917, escaping arrest and deportation because he had distributed the anarchist paper Cronaca Sovversiva, he returned to Italy and in 1922 emigrated to Australia. In Melbourne Bertazzon was one of the editors of the anarchist paper Il Risveglio and a leader of the anti-Fascist Matteotti Club. He corresponded with leading anarchists in Europe and America. In 1930 he published L’Avanguardia libertaria, which in 1932 was banned by the federal government. Under surveillance from fascist consuls and the latter’s informers, in 1933 Bertazzon settled near Griffith, New South Wales, from where he went on pursuing the anarchist cause, until his death in a car accident in 1940.